Some Works that inspire us

Articles
  • “Roots Deeper Than Whiteness” by David Dean is written for an American context, but this essay powerfully details how European peoples came to have our cultural identities erased and replaced with whiteness. In essence, Dean's work demonstrates what white people in America lost to become white, and how that loss informs white stakes in antiracism.
  • “Be(com)ing an Asian tangata tiriti” is an essential piece of work by Lincoln Dam, who links “Chinese, Thai and Theravāda Buddhist philosophies on relationality and ethics” to the need to “have good, productive relationships with Māori and Te Tiriti”. We think that this kind of deep dive sets an important precedent for Pākehā to follow with our own Earth-honouring traditions.
  • “Harm received, harm caused: A Scottish Gael’s journey to becoming Pākehā” by our own Dani Pickering examines the bilingual English-Gaelic diaries of their great-great-great grandfather, and finds that the loss of their ancestor’s language and land in the Scottish Gàidhealtachd paved the way for his assimilation into Pākehā whiteness.
  • “How Finance Colonised Aotearoa: A Concise Counter-History” by Catherine Grace Cumming (now Catherine Comyn) is a long-ish, somewhat academic article, but well worth persevering with! It details the extensive role that finance and economics play in colonisation historically as well as presently, and why we need to pay attention to these things too to meaningfully challenge colonisation. Also available now as a complete book.

Podcast episodes
Reports
  • He Whakaaro Here Whakaumu Mō Aotearoa, often referred to as the Matike Mai report, details the findings of the Matike Mai Aotearoa working group on constitutional transformation. In short, after hundreds of hui with Māori entities across the country, the working group found that a transformation of New Zealand’s constitution built on Te Tiriti o Waitangi and underlined by tikanga Māori is an essential task for decolonisation in this country.

Books
  • Caliban and the Witch by Sylvia Federici is an important book which demonstrates how the European Witch Hunts paved the way for capitalism and white supremacy as much as modern patriarchy. With the caveat that the author has more recently shown some transphobic tendencies, this book is still a valuable contribution towards understanding and appreciating our ancestors of resistance who fought back against capitalism right at its earliest beginnings in the mid-1000’s.
  • Towards a Grammar of Race in Aotearoa New Zealand and its numerous contributors--Māori, Pacific peoples and tauiwi from the global majority--all make phenomenal contributions to understanding how race influences New Zealand society in ways that are not only poorly understood, but actively erased. A crucial chapter here by Mahdis Azarmandi demonstrates how the erasure of race even takes place in Pākehā Tiriti work, underlining how colonisation works in tandem with white supremacy.
  • Longing & Belonging: Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and African peoples in New Zealand by Edwina Pio explores the origins and lives of tangata Tiriti from across the world. Despite the title, the book also explores non-British European origins, tracing the villages of Italians, Danes, Dutch, Germans, Dalmatians (present-day Croatia) and more whose emigrants were amongst the first of their own peoples to come to Aotearoa. A real treasure trove of origin stories for tangata Tiriti!
  • Celebrating the Southern Seasons: Rituals for Aotearoa by Juliet Batten inspires us by demonstrating how Earth-honouring traditions from the Celtic world and elsewhere in Europe can be revitalised in a diaspora context in dialogue with new places and peoples.
  • Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals by Aurora Levins Morales is a major touchstone for us through the way it intreprets critical family history work as an act of healing.

Websites, courses and other resources
  • Tauiwi Tautoko offers what we would consider "digital deescalation training"—that is, their trainings equip you to tackle anti-Māori racism in the comment sections of Aotearoa New Zealand’s corner of the internet. Using a method built on empirical research, you learn how to engage people where they’re at, lower their guards and get their feelings to care a bit more about the facts! Many of these skills are equally applicable offline too, making it well worth anyone’s time.
  • White Awake is an American white antiracism folk school that Gathering at the Gate was directly inspired by. Their work takes a historical look at racism and capitalism (and patriarchy too in some of their courses), and seriously unpacks why white people should have skin in the antiracism game. While the organisation is definitely working within and speaking to an American context, we highly recommend them and have taken many of their courses ourselves.
  • Báyò Akómoláfé’s website is an absolute treasure of a resource. A true visionary, his work (and courses) seek to find pathways out of the destruction brought on by colonial ways of thinking and being.
  • Christine Sleeter’s website offers some basic frameworks and tools for carrying out critical family history research, a central component of GatG’s work.

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